Thursday, March 26, 2015

License plate as soapbox? --- March 26, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A civil rights activist in South Carolina had the most practical reaction
I’ve seen about the controversy over Sons of Confederate Veterans’ specialty license
plates.

The Rev. Joseph Darby, first vice president of the Charleston NAACP,
said he is not opposed to plates with a Confederate battle flag because they
identify people of whom he should be wary, reported Diane Knich of The Post and
Courier newspaper.

“I don’t turn my back on that person because you never know,” Darby
said.

South Carolina is one of nine states that produce Sons of
Confederate Veterans’ license plates featuring the battle flag. Others are
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee
and Virginia.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, a case involving
Texas’ denial of the Sons’ specialty plate on grounds it “might be offensive to
any member of the public.”

The Sons say the flag celebrates Southern heritage, but for many
African Americans it is a potent symbol of oppression and racism. If someone chooses
to exercise his right to free speech by paying extra for a license plate he
knows others find offensive, he is, as
Darby suggests, giving the rest of us fair warning. You never know.

We’ve always judged motorists by their bumper strips and decals. Now
state governments have discovered a dandy fund-raising machine that offers our
vehicle as a means of self-expression. For a fee, each motorist can have a unique
soapbox, the 6-inch by 12-inch rectangle of aluminum on our bumpers.

Texas offers more than 400 specialty plates, touting enthusiasms, groups
and causes, any number of which might be offensive to someone. But it has
denied only a couple of applications.

The Lone Star State embraces its Confederate heritage with Confederate
Heroes Day, an official state holiday on Jan. 19. Three permanent monuments to
Confederate soldiers are on the state Capitol grounds. The Capitol gift shop
sells Confederate battle flag posters, fake Confederate money and miniature Confederate
flags. A nearby state office building is named for the postmaster general of
the Confederate States of America.

But when the Sons applied for a plate with its logo, the
Confederate battle flag surrounded by the words “Sons of Confederate Veterans
1896,” with a faint Confederate flag in the background, thousands of complaints
poured into the board of motor vehicles, which rejected the request.

At issue for the Supreme Court is whether specialty plates are
private speech protected by the First Amendment or government speech and
subject to censorship. Texas argues that the government makes and owns the
plates and has the right to restrict what they say. The Sons say the plates are
private, protected speech.

More than speech issues are involved, though. License plates are
big business. Texas raked in $17.6 million last year from specialty plates.

“They’re only doing this to get the money,” Chief Justice John
Roberts said during oral arguments.

States typically pass some of the fee back to the nonprofit
organizations. For example, Choose Life America raised more than $21 million from
August 2000 through last October from specialty plate sales in 29 states and
the District of Columbia, according to court documents.

The court has delayed consideration
of a separate case from North Carolina, Berger
v. American Civil Liberties Union of
North Carolina. The state legislature approved the anti-abortion “Choose
Life” specialty plate but then denied a request for one with the abortion-rights
message, “Respect Choice.”

Texas argues that if it grants the Sons a specialty plate, it will
have to allow plates from even the most offensive groups, such as al-Qaida. Roberts
had an alternative solution.

“If you don’t want to have the al-Qaida license plate, don’t get
into the business of allowing people to buy…the space to put on whatever they
want to say,” the chief justice said.

The court is expected to rule in June. One solution, as Roberts
suggests, is for states to stop selling license plates as a soapbox. That’s sensible,
but states would hate to lose the easy revenue.

Most motorists, though, would be happy not to have to look at offensive
license plates.